2021

Hacking is something we should all be wary of, unfortunately though, many organizations don’t give it a second thought until they’ve already had a security debacle and are actively trying to recover from it.

While there are many different ways that an attacker can infiltrate an IT system, most cyber-attacks adopt pretty similar techniques. Specifically, Phishing attacks are one of the most common security challenges that both individuals and companies continue to face trying to keep their information secure.

A survey done by Ivanti consulted over more than 1,000 IT professionals on the effects of phishing at their organizations, the results indicate that 74% of companies have been victims of phishing in the last year and 40% were attacked in the last month only. Staff shortages, a lack of security training, End Users’ misbehavior and an increase in mobile device usage for work are the main factors.

This study also shows that the success rate of phishing attacks has dramatically increased during the COVID-19 pandemic as it forced many companies to shift to remote work.

The past year’s data has shown that 80% of respondents reported the size of phishing attacks expanded, while 85% said the attempts are becoming more sophisticated and intricate, making them increasingly harder to detect. Ivanti reported that smishing (text-message phishing) and vishing (voice-call phishing) have also increased in the past year as more people are using mobile devices for remote work. The report also cites data from Aberdeen Strategy and Research that found a higher rate of successful phishing attacks against mobile devices, which Ivanti said is “a pattern that is trending dramatically worse.” 

As mentioned above, there are plenty of factors that contributed to the high success rate of phishing attacks in the last year, and this statistical study pointed many fingers. A general lack of insight seemed to be one of the root causes, where 37% of surveyors mentioned that a lack of technological understanding among End-Users amplified successful phishing attacks, while 34% directly blamed it on lack of employee understanding.

It’s also interesting to note that while 96% of surveyors stated their organizations offered cybersecurity training that teaches phishing recognition, only 30% confirmed that most employees at their organizations had actually completed their awareness training. 

In addition to the lack in phishing awareness, 52% of those surveyed also reported that their IT teams were understaffed, while 64% said those shortages have led to more time spent on incident remediation.

In short, phishing targets everyone. However, since human error is the main cause behind most cyber breaches faced by businesses, the lion’s share of the attacks starts by targeting End Users who don’t consider security precautions until it’s too late – and they have already compromised their companies’ data.

Below are various phishing techniques used by attackers:

• Embedding a link in an email that redirects your employee to a dangerous website that extracts sensitive information.
• Installing a Trojan via a malicious email attachment or ad which will allow intruders to exploit loopholes and obtain sensitive information.
• Spoofing the sender’s address in an email to appear as a reputable source and requesting personal information.
• Attempting to obtain company information over the phone by impersonating a known company vendor or IT department.

How can you prevent phishing attacks?

It’s a given that new security tools and more investment in awareness sessions and training are crucial to combat phishing attacks. Moreover, security principles and policies should be in place at companies so that employees understand how to protect their devices especially when working remotely.

Here are a few of the best practices for End Users to follow in order to prevent phishing attacks:

• Try to recognize phishing emails by checking the following:
  • Sender’s address
  • Email’s subject
  • Embedded links and attachments
• Use longer phrases for passwords rather than just a few characters, and change it regularly.
• Never share your passwords with anyone.
• Never click on email links, always type the address directly into the address bar.
• Keep your desktop AV, anti-spam, etc. up to date

Moreover, here are a few steps companies can take to protect themselves against phishing:

• Educate your employees and conduct training sessions with mock phishing scenarios.
• Implement a zero-trust security model to prevent attackers from moving laterally in networks using stolen credentials.
• Use artificial intelligence, machine learning and automation to identify and remediate threats. 
• Eliminate passwords in favor of biometric identification, which removes the most common weak point used by phishing attackers.
• Deploy a SPAM filter that detects viruses, blank senders, etc.
• Keep all systems up to date with the latest security patches and updates.
• Install an antivirus solution, schedule signature updates, and monitor the antivirus status on all equipment.
• Develop a security policy that includes but isn’t limited to password expiration and complexity.
• Deploy a web filter to block malicious websites.
• Encrypt all sensitive company information.
• Convert HTML email into text only email formats or disable HTML email messages.

BluGrass Technologies can help you protect your critical systems, network, and applications from cyber threats by deploying and maintaining the highest level of security across your infrastructure. From cloud to end-to-end systems, our Cyber Managed Services can identify risks and prevent future threats before they can disrupt your organization. We can provide your organization with a host of security services such as intrusion detection and prevention, incident management, managed vulnerability and identity and access solutions, to name a few. When your company’s data is at risk, we spare no effort in ensuring you have the best and most impenetrable network security system in place.

Get in touch with us to begin deploying the optimum cybersecurity for your enterprise today.

The cyber-threat scene is ever-changing and ever-increasing. Staying up to date with the malicious trends threatening your entire business’ infrastructure is a priority that should not be taken lightly. As hackers are becoming more creative and aggressive in their approaches, cybercrimes are becoming an ever-growing online pandemic. It’s imperative than ever to protect your business and personal devices from breaches and growing cyber threats.

Looking back at 2020 alone, there have been some rather shocking statistics. According to FintechNews, 27% of COVID-19 cyberattacks targeted the banking sector or healthcare organizations in 2020. To put things more into perspective, COVID-19 is credited for a 238% rise in cyberattacks on Banks alone while Healthcare was the most expensive industry in data breach costs, coming in at a whopping $7.13 million USD according to (IBM).

IBM also found that it takes an average of 280 days to identify and contain a breach – the amount of damage that can be done alone in 280 days is overwhelming.

Cybersecurity is continually challenged by hackers, data loss, privacy, risk management and changing cybersecurity strategies. The number of cyberattacks is not expected to decrease anytime in the near future. Moreover, increased entry points for attacks, such as with the arrival of the internet of things (IoT), increase the need to secure networks and devices.

If you’re finding it overwhelming to ensure your company is consistently up to date with the latest in cybersecurity protection, you’re not alone. Maintaining optimal levels of protection in a constantly evolving threat landscape is a challenge for all organizations, especially after COVID-19. Traditional reactive approaches, in which resources were put toward protecting systems against the biggest known threats, while lesser known threats were undefended, is no longer a sufficient tactic. To keep up with changing security risks, a more proactive and adaptive approach is necessary.

Through our partnership with Comodo Cybersecurity, we are able to offer our clients unparalleled cloud-native cybersecurity solutions, customized to their needs and organization size.

Comodo is the world’s leader of next-generation open-source cybersecurity, with the industry’s most disruptive innovations. Comodo’s cybersecurity products maximize intelligent sharing between every component of the platform, therefore providing superior security.

Comodo leverages innovation to celebrate and support the cybersecurity community by offering the very first open-source endpoint detection and response (EDR) and is the only company that analyzes and gives a trusted verdict for 100% of files on a network.

Get in touch with us at https://www.blugrass.com/contact-us/to request a demo.

We are proud to announce our partnership with Odoo, the #1 Open-Source Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) & Customer Relationship Management (CRM) provider.

Odoo’s ERP software helps organizations of all sizes to easily standardize, streamline and integrate their internal business processes and activities.

By being a Ready Partner with Odoo, BluGrass will be able to offer its clients a wide array of easy-to-use softwares for day-to-day business requirements, such as, CRM, e-commerce, billing, accounting, manufacturing, warehouse, project management, inventory management and more. In addition, we will be specializing in the end-to-end implementation and support of all Odoo products for our clients, ensuring they maximize their return on investment.

What is ERP and how can it help your business grow? Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a business process management software that manages and integrates a company’s day-to-day activities such as financials, supply chain, operations, reporting, manufacturing, and human resource activities.

To succeed in today’s increasingly competitive and complex business environment, companies need to put the right systems in place to keep up with the constant, dynamic changes. They need systems that allow them to easily streamline, automate, and scale their business.

What are some of the components of Odoo’s ERP & CRM system?

• Website builder with Odoo CMS (content management system)
• Accounting
• Subscriptions
• Planning
• Consolidation
• Invoicing
• Timesheets
• Inventory management and warehouse management
• Manufacturing MRP
• Field service
• Marketing, including apps for Marketing Automation, Email Marketing, and Social media
• eCommerce
• Point of sale
• Helpdesk for customer support
• Project management
• Product Lifecycle Management (PLM)
• Human resources, including apps for Recruitment and Employee Referral
• eLearning
• CRM (customer relationship management)

Utilizing Odoo’s ERP for your business allows you to move past dealing with basic systems that don’t allow you to grow, and consistently meet your customer’s expectations above and beyond expectations.

By adding this partnership to our growing network, we will continue to establish ourselves as an all-encompassing Managed Services Provider within the Middle East & GCC, and maintain our commitment to our clients by providing them with dynamic and top-notch IT solutions to continuously enhance their digital transformation journey.

Odoo is the most installed business software in the world. It is used by over 5 million users worldwide ranging from startup companies (1 user) to large enterprises (300,000+ users). Odoo have developed 30 main applications which cover a wide variety of business needs and are regularly upgraded.

For more information on how to get started with implementing Odoo “for Businesses”, contact us at info@blugrass.com

As the search for digitally transforming one’s business continues to increase, many companies are faced with the ongoing question; should we choose to continue to invest in in-house integrations, or offload them to a Managed Services Provider (MSP)?

On the one hand, some companies are choosing to keep everything in-house, while others are looking to relieve themselves of the day-to-day burden, and are outsourcing their IT service models, such as Application or Cloud services elsewhere.

Let’s take a deeper look into keeping things In-House vs. Outsourcing:

Size of your Organization

If your organization is on the smaller scale and is quite manageable (less than 20 computer users), you may find it more cost-effective and fitting to keep your IT in-house; where an internal team can handle the requests coming in. On the other hand, if your organization runs slightly larger (25-100+ users), an outsourced Managed Service Provider will offer your business the right technological and consultative solutions to drive your business to success.

Availability

One would think it preferable to have their IT team right down the hall for assistance and support as soon as it’s needed, but an outsourced MSP will often identify and resolve issues before your business is aware of the problem in the first place, as they provide 24/7/365 network monitoring and remote support, to counter any IT threats before your business is affected. Such extensive network monitoring can be costly and difficult to manage for a small business’s on-site IT team. 

Resources

You may find that some start out with an in-house IT expert until they are stalling in their new projects or are facing a huge backlog of user requests that they cannot keep up with. An MSP would likely have a larger pool of resources and multiple employees available to assist users if another support technician is not available. An MSP would provide enough support to continuously meet the demands of your customers and your industry. 

Comparing Costs

IT costs vary from business to business, but how much you’re choosing to invest in technology ultimately depends on whether your company is simply looking to get by with the basics, or looking to utilize the best out of IT to enhance your business’s productivity and efficiency.

A full-time IT employee or department with capabilities equal to an IT managed service provider would likely cost a small to medium size business more than outsourcing IT services. 

Combining the cost of infrastructure, hiring expenses, and hourly rates of developers, you can reduce your development cost by up to 60% by outsourcing.

At the end of the day, it all scales down to your business requirements and your priorities. When comparing outsourcing IT services with an in-house IT team, it’s imperative to first understand your business’ long term goals, and what will keep it running and drive its success. 

At BluGrass Technologies, we work with organizations of all sizes to ensure they are equipped with the right technological tools and resources needed to continuously drive their growth and success. Get in touch with any member of our IT managed services team to find out if we will be a good fit for your business.